Bite (Ex)

A lamp blighter’s sharp-toothed bite is a primary natural attack that deals 1d8 points of damage.

Blighted Arrows (Su)

When a lamp blighter fires an arrow from any bow, it can augment the arrow’s properties by sprinkling it with dust from its wings as a free action. It can choose any one of the following effects when dusting an arrow. The lamp blighter can use this ability a number of times per day equal to its Charisma score (15 for a typical lamp blighter). The save DCs are Charisma-based.

Bleeding Wound: The target must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save, or it takes 1d4 points of bleed damage.

Blinding Terror: The target must succeed at a DC 15 Will save or become blind and panicked for 1d4+2 rounds. If the target succeeds at its Will save, it is instead shaken for 1 round.

Sleep: The target must succeed at a DC 15 Will save or fall asleep for 5 minutes.

Claws (Ex)

A lamp blighter’s pointed claws are primary natural attacks that deal 1d10 points of damage and threaten a critical hit on a roll of 19–20.

Eye Pluck (Ex)

Once per round, when a lamp blighter confirms a critical hit with a claw attack, or when it hits a helpless creature with a claw attack, it can pluck out its target’s eye as a free action unless the affected creature succeeds at a DC 13 Fortitude save. A creature that loses an eye this way takes a –4 penalty on all sight-based Perception checks until the damage is repaired (such as with a restoration spell). The save DC is Strength-based.

Invisibility (Su)

A lamp blighter remains invisible when it attacks. This ability is constant, but the lamp blighter can suppress or resume it as a free action.

Twisted in mind and form, lamp blighters have been corrupted by their own hatred for civilization and its encroachment upon lands that were once wild. Named for their practice of darkening lamps to draw victims close and also their love of ripping out eyes with their vicious claws, they take out this hatred upon inhabitants of border villages and towns, amplifying fear of the dark in the places they bedevil.

Lamp blighters stand 2 feet tall fully when upright, though they are usually hunched over and flying at eye level of their victims, and they weigh about 20 pounds.

Ecology

Lamp blighters were once pixies who chose to remain in their ancestral lands in the face of civilization’s relentless expansion. Embittered and resentful of what they saw as an attack upon their way of life, these fey developed malice and anger that transformed their bodies: their bright colors faded, their teeth and claws elongated and sharpened, and their minds turned to vengeance.

To those who study these creatures, lamp blighters are evidence of the pliant nature of the fey and how they can be shaped by both their environment and their personalities. Some such researchers go so far as to theorize that lamp blighters have internalized the corruption and change of certain declining civilized societies, a transformation that mirrors the physical and mental shift from pixie to lamp blighter.

Tales of lamp blighters are rare near well-established communities with a strong military presence, though should a once-prosperous settlement start to allow its defenses to weaken and nature to reclaim disused districts, lamp blighters have been known to become bolder and bolder as they work to remove the longstanding source of their anger.

In a lamp blighter’s mind, nothing symbolizes the crushing pressure of civilization like fixed points of light. The stars glittering in the heavens, the glowing pulse of a firefly, and even forest fires brought about by lightning strikes—these are all in motion in accordance with some natural order. Torches fitted to walls, posts with continual flame cast upon them, and hanging lanterns, however, represent to lamp blighters the contrived attempts of civilization to control nature and to bring the assumed safety of light to all places at all times. By their own twisted logic, lamp blighters believe that by terrifying their enemies by extinguishing their lights and plucking out their eyes, they give their victims just what they think they desire: a world of perfect, orderly nothingness.

While they prefer to spend much of their time invisible, a favorite tactic of a lamp blighter is to become visible, use disguise self to take the form of a pixie, and then shyly introduce itself to a town’s residents. After it manages to build trust with these residents over the course of days or even weeks, the lamp blighter viciously turns on them, attacking when they least expect it, like a friendly dog suddenly turned feral. Brutal attacks like these are often preceded by what appears at first to be simple accidents. Those near one of these subtle infestations notice streetlights snuffed and entire streets thrown into darkness at inopportune times, often leading to accidents such as cart crashes and falls down steps.

Habitat and Society

Lamp blighters prefer to live in wild areas just outside of frontier villages and towns, but they spend much of their time within those same villages and towns, working to spread fear. They build nests in hollow trees, decorating them with the eyes of the creatures they have attacked.

Lamp blighters are usually solitary, driven as they are by immediate desires to harm and terrify rather than establishing any long-term communities of their own.

Occasionally a lamp blighter with a particularly strong will takes command of a group of gremlins, but those arrangements usually result in general mayhem rather than focused effort. Bogeymen sometimes partner for short periods with lamp blighters, though the more brazen and direct approach of the lamp blighter means a bogeyman often uses the corrupted creature as cover and distraction for its own activities.

For their part, pixies look upon lamp blighters with a mixture of nervousness and pity: they worry that what has happened to their former kin could happen to them, but they also have deep compassion for their lost cousins. Although individually less powerful and dangerous than lamp blighters, pixies are rumored to sometimes organize raiding parties and set out to capture lamp blighters, restraining them as they attempt to turn them away from evil. Whether any lamp blighter has ever been redeemed in this way—or any other—is unknown.